Occasionally, a vehicle owner must leave his or her vehicle with an unknown third party. In many cases, it is necessary to allow the third party to operate the vehicle without the supervision of the vehicle owner. Such instances may include leaving the vehicle with valet personnel, an oil change or tire repair technician, or body shop employee for example.
Although it may be necessary to provide the third party access to the vehicle, usually it is not necessary for the third party to assume complete operational control of the entire vehicle. For example, the unknown person would not necessarily need full function capabilities of the vehicle powertrain, e.g. full RPM and high speed. In addition, it is not necessary for the third party to access storage compartments of the vehicle.
When it is deemed that the third party operator of the vehicle does not need certain functionality of the vehicle, such as those above, it is desirable to program or otherwise set the vehicle to operate in a reduced operational mode. Accordingly, once the third party is finished with the vehicle, it is desirable to quickly reset the vehicle to operate under normal operational capabilities. Although some vehicles are equipped with a valet mode function, a need still exists in the art to improve functionality and ease of use of such a feature.